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Malcolm L. McCallum

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Malcolm L. McCallum
Born (1968-12-26) December 26, 1968 (age 55)
Maywood, Illinois
NationalityUnited States
Alma materIllinois State University
Eastern Illinois University
Arkansas State University
Scientific career
FieldsBiology
InstitutionsGreen Mountain College

Malcolm L. McCallum (born December 26, 1968 in Maywood, Illinois) is an American environmental scientist, conservationist, herpetologist, and natural historian. He is known as the first to identify that amphibians were going extinct faster than they had during the Great Extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. He is also known for alerting the herpetological community that studies on the life history and ecology of amphibians and reptiles were becoming rare in mainstream herpetology journals, and as a co-founder of the largest herpetology journal, Herpetological Conservation and Biology. His research has been covered by David Attenborough, Discover Magazine, and other media outlets.

Education, research, teaching and service

In 1992 McCallum graduated from Illinois State University with a B.S. degree and a double major in biology and agriculture. He briefly attended the graduate program at Eastern Illinois University, where he earned the M.S. in environmental biology. He worked on behavioral ecology with Mike Goodrich for his MS Thesis, and conducted a large field wildlife study with Edward O. Moll.

In 1997 his discovery of deformed frogs in Madison County, Illinois among other St. Louis news outlets and later appeared on 20/20. He then worked at the St. Louis Children's Aquarium as the institution's grantwriter, and designed educational programs, conducted research on the use of Bovine Somatotropin applications in aquaculture, and delivered tours and extension programming until he left to pursue his Ph.D. in 1999. He also organized and edited the First International Symposium on the conservation and sustainability of the ornamental fish industry on Rio Negro River, Manaus. He participated in several areas of research that later were published by the aquarium from 1999-2001. Stanley E. Trauth, was his doctoral mentor. McCallum's academic line extends back to Archie Carr.

Many of his early papers were focused on natural history, but they also amphibian consevation, ecological immunology, and general biology. He is a expert on the life history and conservation of Blanchard's cricket frog (Acris blanchardi )and his studies on this frog included systematics, immunology, behavior, life history, and conservation needs. He earned the Ph.D. degree in Environmental Science from Arkansas State University, specializing in ecotoxicology and conservation ecology. He continued this as an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University at Shreveport from 2003–2005. After four years in the state, he was the fourth most published herpetologist on Arkansas herpetology behind Trauth, Chistopher T. McAllister, and Mike Plummer.

He moved to Texas A&M University Texarkana in 2005 in response to exigency preparations by Louisiana State University at Shreveport in the face of an $86M state budget deficit. From 2005 to 2009, he was the only full-time biology professor on staff at the Texarkana campus. When he arrived in 2005, the program was largely in disarray. The fallout from release of the previous professor had created much student, faculty, and administrative unrest. He assessed student performance, redesigned the curriculum, organized a paid intern program, and increased the program's rigor. While at Texarkana, he also developed a new teaching method for effectively using scientific articles in discussion settings

McCallum was introduced to Fuzzy Logic during a faculty candidate's presentation. He studied fuzzy computational techniques over the next year and submitted his first manuscript using the methods, Amphibian decline or extinction? Current losses dwarf background extinction rates. At the time, no one spoke of extinction in relation to amphibian declines. His calculations demonstrated that the losses in amphibian biodiversity in recent times represented one of the most rapid losses in biodiversity ever observed. This study immediately changed the discussion of amphibian declines to a discussion of amphibian extinction. The manuscript received widespread notoriety and Discover Magazine listed it among its list of ten most important papers on the amphibian extinction issue. His use of fuzzy approaches was extended to two studies addressing climate change impacts on herpetofauna. These three articles received international attention as important subjects of the United Nations Environmental Program's Panel on the Role of Ecosystem Management in Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Eduction in 2009. He is currently among the foremost experts on applications of fuzzy approaches to life history ecology and conservation biology.

During the 2008 - 2009 academic year, the campus was informed of multiple cuts to state funding that would accumulate to over 22% by the end of the 2009-2010 academic year. He was the only untenured professors among five full-time and part-time faculty in the program after the administration misplaced his tenure portfolio prior to evaluation, and was released due to an excess of biology faculty compared to student enrollment. From 2010 to 2015 he worked as a private consultant and as a visiting faculty member for numerous different institutions including University of Missouri Kansas City, University of Illinois Springfield, and Green Mountain College. In 2013 he published the first study to demonstrate the agronomic herbicide Atrazine could alter the sexual selection process in insects. The study results have important repercussions for nonlethal effects of endocrine disruption on populations, their capacity to interfere with sexual selection, and the role of estrogen in pheromone communication among insects. Another important study released the same year addressed falling public interest in the environment. This study demonstrated that interest in the environment is falling behind other areas of concern. Ficetola responded to this article in a short commentary, suggesting that the deductions of this study were misconstrued. However, that response was rebutted by McCallum effectively obliterating the argument and further explaining that "Policy is dictated by proportional popularity, not absolute numbers of individuals."

Herpetological Conservation and Biology

In 2003 McCallum was asked to edit the journal Herpetological Natural History. After examining the publication record and discussing matters with editorial staff, he declined the opportunity. Instead, he and several other scientists established the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology (HCB). The journal focused on two areas of need in the herpetological community that were closely related, life history and conservation of amphibians and reptiles. McCallum was the original lead editor starting in 2006. He was responsible for promotions, website, manuscript layouts, formatting, and all aspects of running the journal. As the journal grew, he stepped back from many of these roles, allowing others to take over those responsibilities. The journal now has the largest editorial staff and publishes more articles and more pages of herpetological research than any other herpetological journal. It is the leading journal focused on conservation of amphibians and reptiles and has received widespread notoriety and surprising media attention. The journal received its first Impact Factor Rating from Thomson-Reuters Journal Citation Reports in 2011 and continues to maintain a rating competitive with contemporary herpetology journals. In 2013, Google Metrics listed HCB among the top 20 conservation journals on the web.

References

  1. McCallum, M.L. and J.L. McCallum. 2006. Publication Trends of Natural History and Field Studies in Herpetology. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 1(1):63-68.
  2. Walde, A.D., and R.A. Saumure. 2013. Herpetological Conservation and Biology continues to grow. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 8(3):iv-vi.
  3. Bury, RB, ML McCallum, SE Trauth, and RA Saumure. 2006. Dawning of Herpetological Conervationand Biology: A special welcome to your new journal. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 1(1):i-iii.
  4. Life in Cold Blood. The land invaders.
  5. ^ Pepitone, Julianne (November 4, 2008). "10 studies that revealed the great global amphibian die-off -- and some possible solutions". Discover Magazine.
  6. reference to topic of master thesis.
  7. McCallum and Moll. Herpetological inventory of the aquatic habitats of the Savanna Army Depot.
  8. McCallum and Moll. Herpetological inventory of the upland habitats of the Savanna Army Depot.
  9. McCallum, M.L. 1999. Rana sphenocephala (southern leopard frog) malformities found in Illinois with behavioral notes. Transactions of the Illinois State Academy of Science 92:257-264.
  10. siue-pond-yields-deformed-frogs-questions-they-portend. St. Louis Post Dispatch.
  11. St. Louis Children's Aquarium
  12. Method of stimulating growth in aquatic animals using growth hormones Patent No. US 6238706 B1
  13. Conservation for the Oceans. World Aquarium. St. Louis. Activities 1999-2014.
  14. Stanley E. Trauth's Faculty website
  15. Adler, Kraig (ed). 2012. Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Vol. 3. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
  16. Trauth, SE, Robison HW, Plummer MV. The Amphbians and Reptiles of Arkansas. University of Arkansas Press. (see citations within)
  17. article from Shreveport times indicating extreme cuts in LSU system
  18. bleak outlook for universities as state budget cuts bite. Nature 421
  19. PBS story on state budget cuts
  20. http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2006-04-the_2001_recession_continues_to_affect_state_budgets.pdf
  21. McCallum, Malcolm L. (2010). "A Method for Encouraging Classroom Discussion of Scientific Papers". Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 91 (3): 363–366. doi:10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.363.
  22. "GrrlScientist" (July 16, 2010). "Parrots, People and Pedagogies: a look at teaching and education". Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). ScienceBlogs.
  23. McCallum, M.L., J.L. McCallum, S.E. Trauth. 2009. Predicted climate change may spark box turtle declines. Amphibia-Reptilia 30:259-264.
  24. McCallum, M.L. 2010. Future Climate Change Spells Catastrophe for Blanchard’s Cricket Frog, Acris blanchardi (Amphibia, Anura, Hylidae). Acta Herpetologica 5(1):119-130.
  25. McCallum, M.L., M. Matlock, J. Treas, B. Safi, W. Sanson, J.L. McCallum. (2013). Endocrine disruption of sexual selection by an estrogenic herbicide in Tenebrio molitor. Ecotoxicology 22:1461-1466.
  26. Bury, RB, ML McCallum, SE Trauth, and RA Saumure. 2006. Dawning of Herpetological Conervationand Biology: A special welcome to your new journal. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 1(1):i-iii.
  27. Howard, J. (January 30, 2011). "Scholars create influential journal for about $100 a year". The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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